Lynne Leakey RIP – Thoughts on the passing of an icon

LYNNE LEAKEY – SAFARI GUIDE PAR EXCELLENCE, CONSERVATIONIST AND FRIEND – RIP

(Posted 14th September 2014)

(Picture by Xavier Mateu with much appreciation)

When a friend passes, one’s own mortality becomes only too apparent, more so when it is an age mate, or sorts of an age mate anyway as one does not put the age of a lady into the public domain.

When a fellow conservationist passes, the loss feels even more intense as there is one ally less out there and standing in the ranks together, advocating for conservation and the total protection of our wildlife.

When an icon like Lynne passes, all this gets wrapped into one great sense of loss, of being robbed by a cruel stroke of fate, of a friend, an ally, a confidante who would tell and be told in equal measure, often in the wee hours of the night, she on her aged Blackberry and I on my keyboard.

Two days prior to her passing Lynne and I were working on our next meeting, as she was preparing to bring another group of her fans and clients to Uganda for gorilla tracking. That followed a humorous exchange of pictures on our FB pages of our last meeting two years ago in Nairobi, when we shared tea at four in the morning at the Boma Hotel, followed by a lunch last year at Hemingways in Karen. It was the social media which kept us connected and it was from a phone call by a common close friend and the social media sources that I learned of her passing during the night of 11th to 12th of September, in a tent, while on safari in Tanzania.

No passing of a person I know I would ever call anything but a tragic loss but Lynne went into the next world at a place she loved, doing what she loved and what she was rightly famous for. One of the most renowned safari guides and naturalists in Eastern Africa, carrying the famous name Leakey after she had married at a young age into the Leakey family, she left thousands of safari clients spell bound and hungry for more details and of course also for more tales around the campfires of lodges and safari camps across the region, all places where the people who knew her will be devastated by the news which are now all over Facebook.

Lynne was a regular visitor to Daphne Sheldrick’s place in Karen where the elephant orphans are reared and also actively supported a number of conservation projects, many focusing on elephant but generally for all endangered wildlife, rhinos and the big cats included. She will be missed at the Elephant Orphanage, by the staff and by the young eles as she will be missed by her fans and friends from around the world.

I was privileged to have met her decades ago, when she was what we then called a ‘courier’, working for an American safari tour operators based in New York and when I was working at a Nairobi based safari operator. We soon struck a friendship beyond just work and friends we remained until now, and will remain beyond.

I mourn such losses as they are mounting of late and will treasure those who remain still with us on this earth just that extra bit more, only too aware that a meeting today can in fact be the last.

But while I mourn I also celebrate Lynne’s life, her accomplishments, her professionalism and her genuine warm friendship she had with many people she met, whose’ life she touched and whom she stood by through thick and thin. Rest in peace now, let your spirit soar over the plains of the Serengeti and the Masai Mara and all the other parks you ever visited – and be the guardian angel for the elephants and rhinos and all other game you so enjoyed watching while you were still with us.